Thrifted and Repurposed
by VegetaCold
Summary: When Kid Flash arrives at the tower after defeating the Brotherhood of Evil, Robin realizes Starfire doesn't love him like he does as her actions translate into betrayal, and a familiar scrounging enemy, Slade, is there to push corruption and capitalize on the situation when Robin feels alone. No Yaoi even though that'd be hot.
1. Chapter 1

I guess I thought I never understood Terra—how she could do the things she did to us after what we had done for her. I knew Slade was manipulative, and it was his fault—but perhaps that was part of the problem, that Slade was so common to me and his antics were so known that in my eyes to not see his evil and cruel nature labeled you harshly as a fool…which I had done to her. I had never actually liked her, and maybe that's important to understand because maybe I failed to give her a chance—maybe if I had had more conviction for her, it would have been easier to see the way Slade took her. I trusted her, and that was about it. Personally I thought very little of her; she seemed to me to be a very foolish and overly sensitive person even before her blunder with Slade, leading to her eminent death and subsequent passage of the events now, even though upon her own wishes, as Beast Boy claims, she is nowhere in existence, at least not for us. So I suppose, noticing these qualities, I could try as I might to understand why she had betrayed us so thoroughly but even in their consideration there was nothing to justify her. And so maybe I thought I could never become like that—never turning against my friends because of something so stupid and so irrelevant, meaningless. Maybe I thought I was better than that, than her—

But I'm not.

The thing is, until you've been in a situation like that, there is no telling how you'll act, really. Terra's betrayal was driven by what she probably viewed as a betrayal on our part—Beast Boy's denouncing of her friendship. But I'd never had to deal with that, not really; up until recently, betrayal wasn't something I had equated to my own life; misfortune? Yes. Pain? Yes. But betrayal? No. I took too little personal connections until the Titans, even considering my former partner, who was never really a partner at all, and I wasn't broken, was easily able to leave, and there was no detachment—but the Titans were not so easy. They had known me inside and out for the majority of my teenage years; Raven, who had been inside my mind, and who had let me inside hers; Cyborg, a best friend who I had fought with time and time again but our relationship was still strong and powerful; Beast Boy, who had equally brawled with me but never gave up on me even when my leadership wasn't at its greatest; and Starfire—Starfire, who, well, means more to me than words can convey, but that might seem sappy, and—

She never knew how much I loved her.

That was where the trouble started.

I was set up for betrayal from the moment I set my eyes on her, any of them, actually—and to think that we were above it, that betrayal, was holding a naivety as strong as Terra's in its earliest days. But we didn't know any better.

In the days after defeating the Brotherhood of Evil, there was a quiet coldness that encompassed our city, where there was so little crime we had to find ways to keep ourselves occupied, as we never had to before, but we were having fun, and even after my failure as a leader in our attempts to take down that horrid group my team was still as trusting and supportive as ever, and actually the only criticism of my judgment came from my own mind, and went on like that for a while. But again, the team still loved me, and when I tried to apologize for my failing them, being frozen when I should have been the one to rescue us all, Beast Boy told me one of the most endearing things I had ever heard to make me truly enjoy that quiet with them, and forget, at least for the moment, my own criticisms: "Dude, if it hadn't been for you," he'd said, smiling at me with that goofy grin and wild eyes, "I wouldn't have had the guts to go charging in there. You may not know but if you weren't our leader we'd all be dead."

Then he said, "And hey, Madame Rouge is such a slice of crazy I don't know if I would have been able to take her down alone, either."

This was actually any and all assurance I needed to forget my pretenses about what I had done, and was to add more to my belief that my team could never think little of me, could never betray me, had always, and would always, loved me no matter what—so there was nothing to fear. We lingered in an air of innocence and equal ignorance, maybe of each other, maybe just me, but there we were. When Beast Boy came home sadly after Terra, supposedly, had turned him down, I went with him to the new movie theatre and we picked out eight of the most awful flicks we could find, and watched them back to back that same night; we called the pizza-delivery person twice and had four pizzas between the two of us and got sick the next morning, and we were lucky the only crime then had already been put in jail or had disappeared off the face of the earth (or so I thought) because we spent the next day passed out on the couch. Jollity ensued with myself and the other Titans, too. Cyborg, Beast Boy and I went to a video game convention and Cyborg and I ended up falling into a virtual guitar contest which attracted such a crowd that Beast Boy said we should have sold tickets (he liked that line) and we saw our pictures and a video of our battle throughout the internet the next day with clashing fans like Control Freak over who had truthfully won (and I noted with some immature joviality that Control Freak's gang mostly sided with my victory).

Raven subsequently had been teaching me tricks of meditation, which I had been interested in ever since I had used her powers and dabbled in the now non-existent evil she had been supposed to create. What she had done a lot with Starfire she now was content to do with me, especially after having searched in my mind and my having looked into hers. She showed me how to visit the spirit world and come into contact with it, though I had little success, and liked more often to grasp a state of simple serenity by meditation which she had coached me on its reaching. I was also able to learn many spells, though of course to use them was a whole different, non-existent story, and mostly I served to watch her as she began her practices in distant fascination. Even though I was not really a part of what she did in these deeper, more complex places, I still liked to witness it, as if that somehow made me more relevant to anything else. I liked the idea of the spirit world if I couldn't get to it; the idea of my parents out there somewhere, though far enough that I could not reach them, was strangely satisfying in its own shy and reassuring right. It was real enough, but not so real that I'd have to justify or do anything.

Later on in this period of peace Starfire took me to the mall, where she had been spending more and more of her time and our money, probably not really understanding its worth, not even after all the years fighting people who wanted to take it; her room, which had for the most part remained a simple, empty thing had quickly transformed into a cluttered, girly mess which she took great pains to enjoy each day. She took me into a youngish accessory store and picked out nail polish, which captivated her, and wanted to paint my nails when she did her own, not understanding yet these type of earthly customs. Justifiably, when she picked out pink and purple bottles, I was not interested, and she asked me what I liked to have and buy, maybe not as absorbedly as she should have been, more absently, politely, than anything as she raked a great deal more little bottles of the stuff into her arms in an array of sickeningly bright colors. I didn't shop much, no, not since my parents had died, and even then, as a boy, I hadn't ever been much of a mall rat. We had been poor and had little luxury to waste time at a mall using money as a leisure activity in its means; but that said I had always liked second hand, thrift, and antique stores, maybe because they were all I could afford. Even with all the reconstruction in the city there was still a remaining antique, goodwill type store at the very end of the city, near the similarly lasting suburban homes, so far away it took more than two hours to get there by foot. I took her there after she had finished spending over twenty bucks on the nail polish, and then another twenty more on our way out when she saw the barrette store and came out with a pair of daisy hair clips, even though I doubted she had ever been in such a store once in her life, and was more content to giggle as she slipped the clips into her already perfect hair and gaze at her reflection in the same store window. Normally I would have maybe thought that type of girl was catty and shallow, but she was Starfire, as if that were a reason in its own right, and I found myself adoring it more than anything.

And I was not surprised when, as we entered, she looked around with a puzzled expression taking her face. She didn't understand why you would buy something used when you could have it new, pretty, and shining, as she perused the shelves of dusty knickknacks and old household appliances and worn clothing on rusty racks; while I contemplated some old tech at a low price that could be used for rebuilding the tower and the like, she picked up an old necklace, probably antiqued, with a silver hair tangled around it, and gave a disgusted shiver, even though the necklace itself was pretty and only a dollar. "It just needs some cleaning off," I said, and removed the hair simply. "Do you want it? I'll buy it for you." And she shook her head, looking repulsed at the prospect more than anything. "The mall of shopping has ones with no hairs on them," she said in the same simple manner, and walked away.

I was not surprised—but I was a little put off, somehow, as if I should have been surprised; and I can remember thinking, _'Well, that's a little superficial, Star. Just because it's old doesn't make it revolting.' _But apparently to her, a mentality like that only made sense. I reasoned briefly that it was probably reminiscent of her days as a Tamaranian princess, but still it seemed somehow really irrational, even if her culture was still, as it probably always would be, a mystery to me. Maybe simply the problem for me was that I was realizing she had a problem with the way I had, and still liked to, lived, not spending money where I didn't have to and never forgetting to appreciate something even if it wasn't new, because it still had its worth and value to me as I repurposed it. I felt embarrassed, and actually for the first time, even more than like when we had become stranded together and she had been so cold to me, felt a small distance put between me and her—that, where once before our differences made our friendship that much stronger, now there was an alienation of one another as our mentalities and beliefs clashed. I began to wonder briefly if I was seeing Starfire for the first time, at least one quirk, if it could be called that, inside the vast compilation of personality that was her, but outside the world of our goofy antics and crime fighting, but quickly I dismissed the thought, even though I stopped to put back the old tech in striving not to be embarrassed by these such differences since she clearly had a problem with second-hand mindsets. I followed her out, asking her if she wanted to go to a nearby jewelry store in the nearby suburban strip mall so I could buy her a new necklace. She happily agreed, and the rest of the night was fun. I bought her a little necklace with a glass star which fascinated her, equally—though I didn't like it as much as the other one, a little gold link chain with a carousel charm on the end that actually spun, and this one cost me a fortune.

But I convinced myself that finding a silver hair tangled was a little disconcerting, and that if I was her, I probably wouldn't have bought it either, but—

I would have just removed the hair.

* * *

In the days that led up to this moment I want to talk about, we were getting more restless and crazier than ever, especially because the crime rate was so low, and the most we had done in that way was stop a bad guy, if you could even call him that, robbing a fast food joint as if that would bring him whatever he needed, money, or whatever, for happiness, or, again, whatever. We had now had several of these sickness inducing all night parties and we had also engaged in a few seriously stupid and dangerous games using the tower to wage them, and to the extent we were bored even Raven joined in in a few of them. Beast Boy had decided one day to ride his moped, which I had bought for him after the incident with the Brotherhood of Evil, around inside the tower, and initially I was seriously angry at his recklessness…but then I jumped on the back of it and we rode around in the topmost part of the tower, scaling several flights of stairs and then, to capture the attention of the other three Titans, jumping a long flight of steps into the main ops center and just barely landing it. Eventually, my own motorcycle was out and I had Starfire hanging onto my back and screeching as we were engaged in a donut contest with Beast Boy, who had managed to get Raven on his moped, reluctantly, but she was actually laughing even as she shrieked, while Cyborg stood referee but was on the verge of getting the T-Car in as well.

Now, this stuff might all seem really stupid to you—and it probably is. Whatever we were doing in those days was, in my hindsight, nothing more than a façade which strengthened my unfortunate beliefs that my friends could never make me feel the way they did to make me do what I would. But what is really strange is that these small, sad moments really meant something to me that I can't deny. It's even more strange to think that something like these moments, so seemingly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, was perhaps actually the closest thing I had ever had to having a real, loose and not crime-based relationship with my friends, who I had always had the conception that maybe I was not the best liked of the group, and maybe they fought for me only because I was their leader and it was the right thing to do, and I thought this especially in instances like the Red X and subsequent apprenticeship to Slade—to hurt me even more than these instances ever did, which, again, I'll never be able to deny that strange, cold irony to. But that was our life then. It was maybe a month before we ever saw crime again, and when we did it still wasn't significant enough to make us cringe—not until now. Then there were simple things, robbers like Dr. Light who now was enough of a laughingstock to make plans what we'd do once we got him in jail, down to predicting how long it'd take, exactly, it achieve that goal, and making subsequent bets, which most of the time we used as incentive to work harder so that we'd achieve whatever stupid prize was offered, an extra hand of cards or slice of pizza or an ice cream cone afterwards. Control Freak's friends would have liked this; I won most of the bets.

The trouble, I guess in relevance to where I am now, really started, or, the initiative for where I am now was sparked, quietly, if anything, the day we heard some of the criminals we had frozen after defeating them with the Brotherhood of Evil had escaped. They had been contained in a main, high security prison in the city where they had been separated, and unfrozen accordingly if they were classified as being benign enough. Among the criminals who remained frozen were the Brain, Monsieur Mallah, Madame Rouge, General Immortus, Cinderblock, Plasmus, Overload, and a host more who were deemed either too reckless or overall dangerous to society. Kept unfrozen, unfortunately, was the remaining Hive Five, Mad Mod, and a few others, but most importantly the former two, the latter of those being whose so called encounter to spur a much darker era, where donut competitions seemed so far away and silly they were almost untouchable, at least with my friends.

Agent Wally aka The Flash, known mostly to us as Kid Flash, and Jinx, who was a lot sweeter than she had seemed when she'd been throwing early punches at us at the request of Slade, told us early on about Mad Mod's escape, though confirmation on this was vague. Jinx said she'd deal with the Hive Five, though she herself seemed unsure whether these rumors of their escape were true or not, but Wally, in assurance, promised to come back to our vicinity in order to help keep Mad Mod at bay after more speculation throughout underground villain sectors, people like Control Freak's friends, told Mad Mod's coming back to destroy the Teen Titans, and any subsequent honoraries, and then conquer the world since there were no stronger, more cunning villains like the main four Brotherhood members to get in his way. This seemed pretty sketchy to me, because even though Mad Mod was exactly that, _Mad_, he was by no means stupid. I could foresee a breakout, yes, but it was highly doubtful that Mod would use that breakout to try and get back _in_, because, in the aftermath of the BHE, wouldn't he at least wait more than a few months to strike again, when most honoraries were still in the area and we had plenty of backup and were still sort of on our guard, because we still were stinging and remembering that darkness which briefly encompassed us? If he was smart enough to build all that crazy tech and a magic cane, wouldn't he at least use a little common sense?—well, he would; there was a Fourth of July which passed between our encounter and the next, that Fourth of July. He had waited because he was smart; Slade was still alive, and still after us. He was brighter than he looked, and though I was skeptical the idea of his coming back was at least enough to put me on edge fully again and to invite Wally to the tower, even if it might be just some stupid hearsay—but I liked Wally anyway, so if it was it wouldn't matter much.

I told him to invite Jinx over, too, and he said he did, but she declined and decided to go directly after the Hive Five, determined to bring them back to jail. I talked to her only briefly over a communicator and she said that she herself had not seen the jailbreak or heard word of it except from Wally, but she claimed that he "got around" considering how fast he was and that she believed him when I expressed some concerns. She said she'd check in if she found them and would probably come to the tower later on. I also asked her to call me if she found the Hive Five and needed backup, and though she agreed, I never heard from her again after that.

I want to clear this up right now, so that, as I go on, you don't think too badly of these guys. Wally was right; there _was _a jailbreak and the Hive Five, Mad Mod, and a few other criminals were missing—but it's also fair to say that since the Brotherhood's defeat and their subsequent jailbreak, we never, not once, actually saw their faces doing anything wrong, or even just on the streets, again after that. Mad Mod never had any plans to do away with us, and world domination was probably the last thing on his mind. As he'd claimed for the Hive Five as well to Jinx and the rest of us, they were not out to rob some really extensive museum outside the city they'd seen on the way into prison. But as his friend, and also as Titans, dedicated heroes, we investigated because it was our job, no matter our skepticism and the actual truth of the situation. To do any less would be a disgrace to our titles, and legacy.

So Wally showed up alone one day when it was cold and raining outside, a late and dreary time in the afternoon when we were all pretty sleepy because the weather just had that feeling to it. Beast Boy and Raven were both sick with colds, and even Cyborg, who was half machine, had managed to get a little touch of the flu as well. They were in their bedrooms passed out, and Starfire and I were the only ones awake at the time when he came, and even then I had been the only one really awake, because Starfire was dozing off a little, too, maybe coming down with a cold as well. But it was a strange transaction and I remember it well; I greeted him at the entrance and he regarded me with a big, goofy grin like Beast Boy's. I remember how his blue eyes were standing out vividly even in the dark, raining weather.

"Hey, Robin—good to see you again."

"You too, Wally," I said, and shook his hand.

"You okay? You seem a little tired."

"Just a little. It's one of those days, you know?"

"Yeah. Where's Starfire?"

Now, that was, in all respects, an odd thing to ask, the more I think about it. The way he said it made it sound like Starfire was really the only one he wanted to see, like he had come to see his best friend and was talking to his best friend's mother. If I hadn't said something I don't think he would have even asked what was the state or location of the other three Titans, because I seemed to sense, at least in the back of my mind, an odd fixation upon Starfire that of course wouldn't die with the conversation. Again I didn't think about it much then; I thought that maybe somehow he knew that the other three were sick and that Starfire and I were the only ones still clean, and maybe in her absence he thought she too had come down with it and was expressing his concern—but there is really no way Wally could have actually known that the three of them were sick, in hindsight, because even when I spoke to Jinx the Titans still hadn't been hit with this illness. But then I was tired too, and thinking clearly probably wasn't so crucial as to be enacted on my brain-agenda.

"She's just inside. The others…"

"Yeah," he said, but it's obvious to me now he was just jumping around his own shadiness and into my own subconscious where he had already figured out my friendly-reasoning, to keep peace and my own sanity.

"Well, come on in. They're in their rooms and if you just stay away from them for a few days you won't get infected."

"Yeah, no problem."

It wasn't.

He came into the main room where Starfire was curled up on the couch with a blanket and Silkie being used somewhat as a pillow. She was half asleep but when Wally entered and she saw him, she perked up immediately, and threw the blanket and the distraught Silkie from her body as she stood up, a smile shaping her soft lips and a light making her green eyes sparkle, and for a moment they looked just like real Sentari moon diamonds set in her face and glimmering softly, like the one Blackfire had given her and she'd sported briefly before the true origin of the diamond came to fruition. That day, she'd been wearing the glass star and it matched her eyes in its wild sparkling. The light was low enough to make the spectacle strangely magical, enough that memory recalling of the instance is easy and vivid and so simultaneously painful in its vividness as I reflect back upon it in regards to where I am now.

In her eyes there was the look of seeing that star necklace in its box, new and polished as it was presented to her and I forked over a card to the cashier, when she looked at Wally.

"Hi, Starfire," Wally said, smiling at her—and if I had been perceptively thoughtful then I might have noticed a similar gleam in his vivid blue eyes as he looked at her. "I missed you."

"Wally!" she said warmly, and floated to him to hug him, giggling. "I have missed you too."

"I didn't know you two knew each other," I said quietly as I watched them embrace. Jealousy was probably already flaring, but without the realization I needed.

"Oh, well," Wally said slowly as he shrugged himself to stare at me and remove that shining gaze from Starfire's fired eyes, where the two of them traded that hungry gaze, as I call it now, in realization—a gaze of longing and greed—…but he still had his arms around her, and I could see him pull her closer, and by no means was their connection lost by my intrusion. "Starfire and I got to know each other when—you know, you were helping Beast Boy after that Terra girl came back, and Jinx and I were still hanging around."

_They did?_

"You…did?"

Starfire nodded. "Why did you not tell me how funny he was, Robin?" she said, and briefly giggled. "He does things so quickly he learned Tamaranian."

_He did?_

"You did?"

Wally nodded, grinning, then turned to Starfire, and spoke a string of strange words I assumed had to be Tamaranian, considering the context of the conversation.

"_Errads adianda Zazforucha," _he paused to laugh and join Starfire, who was giggling now uncontrollably, _"…Nunkaz mozrran rummaka! Hahaha!"_

And the two of them laughed so loudly the windows might have broken, and I probably wouldn't have been too bummed if they had because they'd certainly match the way I was feeling in that very moment—but again, what I think is important to point out here, I was jealous but not in a way that brings alarm. Like if you're in the your school hallways and you see someone talking to your girlfriend or boyfriend and know, or _think_, at least, that they will always be loyal and loving to you, but you still can't help but seethe? That was how I had felt then. I didn't like this little personal thing they shared, what I didn't share with her, but I thought like anything else it would come to pass harmlessly. We'd forget about it and soon she'd be back to being jealous over me when some crazy but cute blonde girl tried to take me to prom, or something similar. That was what I thought—but I think it's important to explain that everyone has a little sense when something isn't right, especially with sensitive issues like love and the like, and I was feeling that then, an itch that was unnerved, upset, as I watched them together, and began to sense, at least in the back of my mind, that there was something so much less benign behind this little seemingly insignificant thing they shared. I felt and knew it, somewhere in me, and maybe, ultimately, that was what finally allowed the incident to spark my situation now the stroke it needed, like a match against its box to light a candle.

Wally's and Starfire's laughter began to taper off after maybe a minute straight of laughing at this little excluding joke, but only when I said, slowly, removed school-hallway jealousy raging, even though I had never actually found myself before caring what Starfire said in Tamaranian because it had never had this exclusive tone: "Um, guys?...um, don't speak Tamaranian over here…wanna clue me in?"

Starfire wiped her eyes and smiled softly at me, staring in my direction with Wally, similarly, gazing at me with his goofy smirk and those crazy blue eyes, and they looked very similar in that moment, bound by the something Starfire and I didn't share. But at least now they weren't embracing.

"I just told a funny joke," Wally said, and Starfire giggled again. _"Rummaka," _she repeated, and Wally joined in her giggling.

"Um, so Wally," I said quickly, and walked over to him, putting a hand on his lanky shoulders. "—the—information about Mad Mod. We should probably put it into the computer. I can show you where it is if—"

"Sure, Robin—maybe tomorrow. I'm pretty beat," he said.

Starfire smiled at him. "I shall show you to the guest bedroom."

And she took his hand, and they left; he spoke to her in Tamaranian and made her laugh, and I watched as she clasped his hand more tightly and they exchanged that bright, young and greedy look like the Tamaranian diamonds, the star necklace. They left me alone in the room, and the door's sound as it shut was hollow and cold in the room.

I would collapse with a soft sigh onto the couch and try and let loneliness drown in the pouring rain as it patted the bay windows.

But I wasn't alone.

Little did I know that that eye—that very real and living eye, about the most real thing in my life, as I now know—was watching me.

I never forgot its silver.

It gleamed differently. And it watched.

* * *

A few days later Starfire came down with a full-fledged cold which had her bedridden like all the other Titans in the tower. We had been supposed to begin our investigation on Mad Mod with extensive monitoring of the city with Wally's help, but with all the Titans out of commission I felt it should be postponed. I told Wally that I did not want to leave the four of them alone in the Tower in their present condition, especially if, as he said, there were villains about and seeking revenge. I suggested that maybe we wait it out and suggested that if he liked he could proceed with tracking down Mod on his own while I took care of my friends. But Wally had other ideas.

"You know Mad Mod better than me. Maybe you should go, Robin. I can stay here with these guys," he said early one morning. It was, again, raining pretty hard and there was an ever-present chill that had taken the air which had driven us to crank up the heat in the tower to levels we would have expressed heated disgust at in any other day with any other weather. But we were all cold, and the weather was terrible enough that even I, who had taken to sleeping with nothing but a pair of shorts even on chilly nights, did little to protest the increase in warmth. If this was what had perpetuated their sicknesses, I wanted it to stop, more than ever, even if in my earliest days, and even now, I barely minded rain.

We were standing over Starfire, who was asleep in her bedroom. I stood by her bedside table, which was cluttered with the recent nail polish and hair clip hauls she'd made in even more trips to the mall, but she still kept that freaking star necklace around her neck though now she wore nothing else but a thin nightgown. Wally himself was sitting on an open spot on the bed on top of the wrinkled blankets, and he had his hand on her forehead, presumably to feel its temperature though it had lingered there so long he could have burned his hand off from its sickly-heat. I also had noticed that he, with too much compassion, had begun to stroke gently the smooth skin of her forehead, as if that, too, were necessary for temperature taking or feeling.

I could feel my jealousy boiling, but calmly I said, deflectively, "Aren't you afraid of getting sick?"

"Nah," he said quickly, and brushed a lock of hair away from her forehead. "When you're fast like me you got all the time in the world to get better, anyway. And I don't want to leave her."

_I'll bet._

"Wally—"

He had turned to look at me when she woke up.

"_Wally," _she said slowly. Her voice was hoarse and soft and weaker than I had ever heard it, which was strange because—I didn't know that she could get any of our earthly diseases, but maybe her body had just adjusted enough to Earth that she now was human enough for crap like colds.

"Yeah, I'm here," he said, and now I saw that he was stroking her hair, and she was smiling up at him. "How you feeling?"

"Like a plixing Rorfian Zopgar," she said, but she was still smiling.

"Oh no," said Wally, but he was smiling, too.

"What?" I said—but no one actually answered me. The two of them were exchanging that same glance again and like Raven's meditation or contacting the spirit world, I felt a serious disconnect from what was going on. The feeling of isolation was stronger and more discomforting than ever, more trying and tiring, and I felt my face flush maybe just as warmly as Starfire's—and the sickness did not feel so far away, but it was not her sickness, but something else, something darker, more benevolent. Something which, to have healed or cured, was a much harder, more non-existent story. A little medicine and bed rest wouldn't help it. What I was feeling was the onset of the need for years of therapy, which I would never have, because of who I was and who I was supposed to be—and with where and _who_ I would end up.

"Will you stay with me, Wally?" she spoke softly, still smiling up at him. Her green eyes sparkled gently in the low, discontented light that illuminated the place.

"Course," he said, and they stared at each other in an expression that was—loving.

"Fine," I barked suddenly, loudly enough to jar their attention to where I stood beside them. "I'm going to find Mad Mod." And then I started toward the door, my boots tapping loudly on the metal floor and echoing with the same coldness as the door had a few days prior, and in my own footsteps I could hear and feel loneliness. It was disquieting in the amount of sadness that sudden feeling managed to bring to me, and suddenly I barely felt like the youth who had defeated the demon Lord Trigon, the evil that was supposed to destroy the world, criminals time and time again—I felt alone, weak, and crippled beyond belief. In their gaze and its word of attachment I felt like I had lost my legs.

"Robin," she spoke weakly to my back, lifting her head up as best she could to talk to me. "Are you—alright?"

She tried but—I was too far gone already. I think if anything had hit me in the moment, it was that one word, that one word that was cold when it didn't apply to me, what I had so wanted to drive it more coldly into my consciousness, and that was enough to knock me into a place I didn't want to be—enough to seal smoothly whatever fate there might have been in her calling. Enough for me to turn my back and to something darker. The silver as it gleamed, away from sparkling diamonds that were new and youthful.

"Fine," I said bitterly, and left the room.

I slammed the door. The tower reverberated with that sound, but—

Maybe it was just me.

* * *

"_Now—what are you doing here in this part of the city, my little one?"_

If I told you I had looked for Mad Mod when I left the tower, I would be lying so thoroughly the hero badge would come off right then and there—because finding Mad Mod was probably the last thing I cared or was thinking about in those initial hours after witnessing that gaze and hearing that one single, crippling word as it replayed unkindly again and again in my already troubled mind, each memory serving like a blow which would inevitably chop at my legs, stability, until I fell like a cold tree in a forest. Instead I sat in the one place that I somehow found familiar to me now—because it was the one place that had actually really changed since coming back from Europe. That was—what should have been familiar and comforting to me suddenly seemed so cold and I did not want to dabble there any longer, and since there was little else I could remember and hold (and remember the other three Titans were unavailable but probably would have been little help anyway) I decided to place my foot into something different and step somewhere else, somewhere new, where whatever the outcome would undoubtedly be less disappointing than what I would similarly undoubtedly experience from something I knew and cherished. So I sat in the torn down structure of the old movie rental store and the candy store and bookstore and toy store, what would become soon a series of boring office complexes—but at least that was straightforward. I wouldn't make a connection with the idea of it becoming an amusement park because that wasn't what it promised; I'd think about the office complexes and poof, there they'd be, no matter how crappy. Impersonal things like this didn't lie.

I sat against a stone pillar that was near the center of the construction site, now empty because of the rain. The clay-covered earth was wet and muddy and even under the cover of the developing roofs and floors, whatever, I had still managed to get quite wet and dirty throughout my trek down to the city. Inside the construction site of the new office buildings there were only a few lights providing visual, and it was otherwise dark and very lonely feeling. I know why I sat there but at the same time, I didn't; I was freezing and exhausted and there was really very little point to wasting time out here rather than just going back to the tower and sleeping if I wasn't going to look for Mad Mod. But I didn't want to go back, and somehow found it more comforting to sit in the mud and scrape at the semi-hard clay with my gloved fingers and simultaneously watch a small, kind of cute (which is why I just watched it) worm crawl along the floor dangerously close to where I sat. I wanted to at least go somewhere a little less dirty and wet, but I couldn't bring myself to move, and whether that stemmed solely from my total disregard for whatever I wanted now that would bring me comfort because I knew, it seemed, so little about that any longer, since it was apparent that to reach comfort was actually unachievable so to waste that time was pointless, or exhaustion and laziness itself, I didn't know, but I just sat there, listening to the rain patter on the roofs and floors as the leaks and cracks dripped the acidy stuff and formed cool gray pools within the floor and the mud. I briefly fell asleep as I listened to it.

"What are you doing in this part of the city now, my little one?"

I jerked my eyes open. Nearby, the sound of thunder was heard crashing and there was a brief flash of brightness from what was probably lighting. In my residual grogginess my eyes were heavy and there was a dull, not-painful headache taking up my mind, and briefly everything was foggy, but the rain and the nature came back first so that I saw it was considerably darker than it had been when I'd dozed off, whenever that was, and even under the spotty cover of the roof or floor or whatever I could feel the very ominous presence of the sky and that—undoubtedly it would storm worse, and probably pretty quickly.

"What are you doing here, little one? Sleeping in the mud? You're going to freeze to death, you know."

Oh—the ominousness probably came from the figure who loomed over me, yes. It was an ominousness worse than the storm or the sky or the clouds—an ominousness I knew too well because its own evil had been engrained in me once before as I dabbled in it even more than I ever had. There was that ominousness: the thick and steady metal boots, the soldier-worthy swagger, mercenary style suit and with his gloved hands to deliver those blows, those strong and practiced hands—and then there was the mask and the one eye as it stared down at me, and the silver shown so brightly it might have mimicked the lightning in that place, but maybe I was hallucinating again in my sleepiness.

One of those gloved hands suddenly reached down. The worm had wriggled its way onto my leg and was crawling there, but I had barely noticed it until he picked it up between his fingers and regarded it with the eye narrowed as it squirmed and writhed for freedom—and he didn't kill it immediately, but just looked at it, narrowed eye, as it wriggled and fought, though he had no intent to let it go or go alive either way. He prolonged it: "I hate these damn things. You know—when you die they'll eat your skin. That was one thing I was lucky to never have happen from cremation, but—when you work for the devil you see things. And you know—if you die out here in the mud they'll just burrow into your skin when it gets too cold for them in the ground, Robin."

I was now on my feet; getting up now was rough and graceless and there was soreness that reigned, but I barely felt it because—

I was looking at the eye.

"_Slade."_

He dropped the worm at our feet. His boot rose suddenly and came down in the (opposite to me) most graceful and practiced of fashions as if he were dancing rather than slaughtering this little creature, worthless to him, as his foot twisted quickly, but so fluidly in evoking the dance-like appearance in movement, and he ground it into the ground. I looked down at that boot now with the widest of eyes; matching my helplessness, the weak separate sickness, I felt my body begin to shake, and not from the cold, where my body was too stiff to feel it. And—

Well, you have to understand something. I hadn't seen this guy in over three years since defeating Trigon, and even then it hadn't been one of the most painless reunions after the death he mentioned in "cremation." I had always told myself that if I ever saw Slade again I would be ready and I would not falter at his sight—but you have to understand that more than anything, that's wishful thinking. And that's on a good day, a day where, maybe, Starfire and I would spend time together and I might kiss her and feel so fly, and ready to take on the world with this girl at my side—but today was obviously not that day. Isolating the situation from my emotions to look at it physically, I had just woken up and was freezing and sore and covered in mud and worms, apparently. And just waking up takes "seeing Slade and being ready" to a whole different dimension of ridiculousness at my own expectation; to somehow expect myself to keep calm when I wake up to the guy I haven't seen in years who has done little more than fling my life into never ending torment and try to kill me more than once, with knowledge reigning like, "Well, wait, if I was sleeping and he woke me up…then that means that he was watching me sleep…" And this little situation here, in that moment, certainly would be like if you were hiding from a tornado in your basement but then the basement started on fire, and that was how I felt—very trapped and cornered by everything. It was like there was really no escaping anything so heavy today, that the universe was intent to set me up for strenuous emotions; and looking back to have expected myself to do anything than back up irrationally against the pillar even though I could have darted away to either side or attacked is stupid of me, because I _was _sick; and this terrible mix of scenarios thrusting themselves at me simultaneously would be too much for even the most seasoned Slade-battler to handle, let alone handle gracefully. I wasn't thinking clearly. Do I attribute that to my situation now? Yes.

Is it my fault? No.

Do I think it's wrong, ultimately? No.

"I like to take charge of life, Robin. If it were up to me—," A cold hand reached near my face and I cringed away as he pulled another worm off me that had crawled up onto my shoulder, probably from the stone pillar. It was already dead. "—Oh, look, this one's dead. Smart, I suppose? Because if it were up to me I'd eat every last one of these before I let it eat me, even squirming."

He let it linger near his mask as he stared at its limp form. I thought he was going to eat it and felt my face pale and then flush green. I felt woozy, and tried my best not to sway, but I could feel it, the faint, what I had never before let become me, creeping up on me.

"Robin, you look sick. Well—," But thankfully, he dropped it, and seemed to decide to leave its form undesecrated, as he was looking at me, but then the eye narrowed in what I can only describe as an undying rage as the boot once again rose and fell, now without that grace it had held before, now driven by some strange, out of body anger. It was an odd phenomenon to witness, but then, I was barely witnessing it so much as struggling to cling onto consciousness. He suddenly barked an obscenity in the direction of the worm and stomped his boot down again. His fists were clenched tightly.

I found words slipping out of my mouth, and they were not mine but of my sickness: "S-stop it…" I was moaning. I tried to press myself against the pillar as if that would somehow make me less visible to him. Briefly I closed my eyes. I didn't want to see him.

I didn't want to see him and—

I didn't want to know how much I looked like Terra.

Quiet encompassed the darkness I had created for a few moments. The only sounds again became the soft sound of thunder crashing and the pitter-patter of the rain as it hit the floors and ceilings of the unfinished complex, where the dripping acid rain evoked mud and made it seem more like a tomb in its musty, congested and heavy air. I could smell damp moss. It was surreal, somehow; along with these few sounds I found my own breathing as it alternated between gasping briefly in strange sickness to varied panting in itself, as I tried to calm myself down, to collect myself. I heard myself and felt like I was in a grave, buried alive, and fighting for life.

But something brought me back—something very real and something familiar, something very young and benign and brighter, before Raven and Terra and the whole lot:

"I'm sorry, Robin…I don't mean to scare you—it's—residual anger from Trigon's powers. I didn't come here to hurt you, you know. Here, would you open your eyes?"

Oh, I remembered this tone all too well, to replace the crazed, wild tone it had previously avidly sported. It was that coddling tone he had used in the earliest days of his interest in me specifically, a voice reserved solely for me and strange in its words but always sincere in that speaking: and so was true now, where Slade's words were perhaps stranger than anything I had heard, but that tone itself, the soft, practiced, concise diction became somehow beautiful in its undying familiarity and was enough to bring back into the real world where the sickness could almost not touch me where I stood. The pillar seemed less like a coffin and more like a simple place. The smells were just nature, and that was about the extent of how that ruled, and—

I wasn't afraid to open my eyes, though that is not to say that Slade became unassociated with fear, but rather that at a subconscious level there was something that had already alerted me to a safety, even if it's a safety I'm not too fond or proud of, because whatever toils lay there was some protection in Slade. I knew that. I opened my eyes to a predestined future by him—a safe one.

So I did.

And in reflection whether or not that power, which is comforting to me but ultimately was able to suede me so dangerously and thoroughly, in that voice was one of the driving forces of my life now, I don't know. But the voice and that moment in the parking garage—I suddenly understood Terra. Things were clearer.

"T-then what did you come here for?" And these words—they were mine. They sounded more like Robin. A stronger, more unaffected Robin. Briefly maybe I forgot about Starfire, but he wouldn't hesitate to remind me, of course. And, to say I had any confidence would be a total lie. I was still shaking wildly, but simply separate from those unreal delusions, and I hope my stuttering is not lost to you.

The eye was soft and regarded me warmly, and he was so close to me that I could see the beautiful silver-gray surrounding the piercing black pupil, striking in its strange, horrid depth, enchanting in that same strangeness. And now the hands were at my face and they were clutching my chin, and I was made to stare undyingly into the pupil. I tried to squirm out of his grip—what normally would have been a simple task with an easy kick was somehow in this physical weakness, lingering emotional toils, the situation itself, an impossible task to make me feel like the worm he had first crushed beneath his boot.

"Relax, Robin," he said softly, and wiped a bead of sweat from my forehead, pushing a lock of hair away as he did, and I was reminded instantly of Wally and Starfire.

"L-let me go," I barked as loudly as I could, maybe briefly fueled by that, but even then there was no volume to it as I would have liked. My mind was spinning because—for whatever strange reason, I didn't want him to let me go and would have been just as content to linger in his grip for a while longer. That probably ran back into my wacked up emotions somehow, as, at least, I would have liked to attribute it to, but in retrospect it was probably something more, much deeply rooted that I can't deny, going back all the way to that brightness and evoked by that soft voice. But in the moment I tried to deny it, because it was all I could do—all the power I had anymore, as I was pressed up again the wall and my face in my enemy's hands, which were strong enough to snap my neck at any moment if he so chose. Maybe it would have been better to die then, in retrospection, to not have to deal with what I've gotten myself into now—but he had made it very clear to me before: he was not done with me and I would never rest as long as he was around. Maybe he didn't put it bluntly, as he had when I tripped on that reagent, but I think even then we both had a mutual understanding, something very undeniable ultimately, that there was to be a lot of restlessness between us in the strange rest_ful_ness that he would go onto offer in the coming days. Our relationship was strange. If I could explain it even then I probably wouldn't be where I am today; because if I had known the kind of control he had then I probably would have never given into it. But it was a sad situation, unfortunate in how some seemingly small insignificant events came together to mess with the future so thoroughly. It was strange, in that way, but to be honest if I had expected anything less or more that my own actions were to so thoroughly influence how Slade and I came to be especially when I remembered the Red X incident and the like I'd have been lying bluntly to myself.

"Why?" he said very softly. Maybe he sensed what I was contemplating. "Why should I let you go? You don't have anyone else, do you?"

It was all I could say: _"What?"_

The eye narrowed and the hands tightened in their caress against my cheeks, but not enough to make me uncomfortable or to hurt me. I guess the best way to put it is that in this he was making himself better known at what he was doing, and that was it. The voice again was soft and thoughtful, cooing as it had been before. For a moment I was reminded very thoroughly of the reagent and my hallucinations, but that was not to go on to make me fight him because—I noticed the differences now. I was not hurting, and he was actually being gentle; there were similarities, but they only somehow seemed to enhance my understanding of these said differences. "Robin, did you think I wouldn't watch you when we last departed? Did you have yourself convinced it was over? _No. _You are still very much on my mind, my little child—and I've watched you."

I closed my eyes again and tried to jerk out of his grip, which, as I tried to move, proved to tighten in a way that was now pretty uncomfortable immediately. I suddenly found myself pushed up against the pillar even further and realized instantly his closeness; his body was pressed up against mine and as he looked down at me with that one hungry and expecting eye, gleaming in its old silver, I was suddenly aware of something pretty prevalent and alerting all the same: it was uncomfortable but not painful, and then it was not even uncomfortable. I had a flash of early discipline when I'd done something bad by my betters. It was as if—yes, it was invasive, but it was as if he had every right to do what he did. However I still found myself protesting because again, it seemed to be all I could do, and seemed that to protest would define me as a hero, and that if I did not, that title would be taken away from me, like if I hadn't gone looking for the non-existent Mad Mod. I squirmed. "Let me _go_…"

"Why, Robin?" he said, and now his face was so close to mine I could feel his warm breath as it rose from the slots of his mask and tickled my face; my nostrils flared but actually it smelled like cinnamon and mints, like candies, though I was probably turned off by a lingering scent of tobacco that held it, though it was somehow to my understanding that he was completely in control and maybe a person's breath is an indicator of that aspect; that is, if it didn't smell like liquor or something really telling like that, and it didn't smell unpleasant, maybe there was something to be said for that type of person. In retrospect I don't remember if I had brushed my teeth that morning but it was probably pretty likely I hadn't, but thankfully he didn't say anything about it in the course of our conversation even though I was close enough to see the contours of dark, shadowed young skin that surrounded his eyes. "Why should I let you go? So you can go back to that tower of yours and watch the two of them elope right in front of you?"

I could feel my eyes open and become wide as a single question was highlighted in my mind and prevalent: _how does he _know_ that?_

I might have voiced it but he continued steadily as he cut me off, and it was apparent that he wanted to give me little time to think before he threw his whole speech my way, in more stupid retrospection. "You may think I gave up on you with Terra, little one. On the contrary. Things may not have gone as I planned, but—I think more than anything you proved yourself to me, when I think back on it. After the whole mess with Trigon I realized I was proud of you—all the grandeur that became you." The eye flashed with the briefest but most vivid brightness of strange excitement in remembrance that I would never have expected to see from someone like Slade—but it was there. "When we worked together to fight those demons—there was nothing more natural than that, don't you agree? And so—I've been watching you. Waiting until you came back—"

"_And you aren't disappointed when I failed there?"_

Now, these words were probably the blatant result of the recent uprooting of things I thought I knew from one stupid occurrence that was defining of my situation now, as you probably understand; however these words themselves were as detached as ever, and I had no control as they slipped out. They seemed really disembodied, more than anything, because if I had said them I didn't feel it—but these words belonged to me, and were true. I knew it—I had felt the words early on and had lived them, and though I was endeared by my friends' assurances early on if those initial concerns to break me down about my leadership had ever actually left, well, to say that would be lying. And then they were probably brought up by my jealousy in its period of being flared, when suddenly it seemed hard to trust anything I thought I knew because—well, where my life was was nothing short of being foreign enough to bring back that hesitation. But I think it's important to tell you now that, the extent of my friends' betrayal, if you think what I'm going on about now is stupid, was only to be furthered, and I probably had some conception of this even then with Slade.

And Slade was good—Slade had heightened senses. He could feel your most uncertain emotions, could see them clear as daylight and sniff them out so he had such a great understanding of them that he knew just how to pick you apart. The residual anger could be his downfall sometimes, I think—but he knew how to control it, I think, and when it was necessary to leave it alone, because when it came to me, well—I think he was only angry at what was happening to me and not at me myself, as probably with the worm who had offended him, in retrospection, somehow, by dying on my shoulder, though I wouldn't understand these strange actions and the driving force of his anger and hatred towards something like that until later. And that little indication of my uncertainty in that foolish question was all he really needed to gain control of me and I knew it, instantly—in that moment Terra and I became an interchangeable person, an embodiment collectively of weakness and self-defacing beliefs. He saw it, too.

"Did they make you feel that way, little one?" he said, softly. I barely noticed he was calling me 'little one' but even if I had I don't know that I would have attacked that, honestly, because it's hard to say sometimes whether or not my actions would have played out the way I'd like to think—but in honesty what I realize should have made me angry in its condescending quality was not so condescending at all, at least, not in the way I probably would have liked to allow me a chance to attack, and so anger was far from me, then and even now. It was something much more complex than I'd ever really be able to understand, and so could be said for Slade, and to even know if I'll ever understand his motives I'm doubtful. "Oh, I don't feel that way," he said, and his hand was again gently caressing my cheek. He had put a little distance between our faces as he calculated the best way to gain his control. "I don't know much about that little group in Paris, but—I know that they wanted you and they put everything into getting you. They ignored your friends. If anything, your friends are the failures for leaving you with their hardest adversary and taking the easy routes themselves. They're very inconsiderate, you do know that? Especially that Starfire…"

"_Don't talk about her that way!"_

The eye narrowed. "Oh, she doesn't need you to defend her, little one. She's got _Wally_, doesn't she?"

I felt my teeth clench, and where I might have attacked once I seemed to have forgotten my arms. I was snarling as I once again closed my eyes and pressed my cheek against the pillar, trying to keep myself from giving him the satisfaction I thought he wanted if I were to erupt and throw all my emotions his way, thus giving him all the more ammo he needed to hurt me. Obviously he already knew how I was feeling, and though I probably should have gone on to make it seem like I didn't care, I wasn't above that, able to. And more than anything I found myself scrounging to at least not give him more, to shrink away as if doing so would somehow similarly make to go all away, diminishing the effect of his present knowledge. I was weak, helpless, foolish—Terra.

He took my face in his hands again more tightly and forced me to turn so that I could look at him, though I refused to open my eyes—but I didn't need to. He had me where he wanted me, uncalculated, emotional, without control. He was ready to spring what he wanted to say, and no amount of shrinking away from him would change that, or its impact. I was right where he wanted me, had been, always, since the moment of waking up—but if there was an exact moment when I think I once again belonged to him, it was that moment my teeth came together. Like jail bars clanging coldly in the darkness of the jailhouse to seal one's fate, locking them up for life. That was where I was, and if anywhere—I was in Alcatraz.

"Robin, I didn't come here because I wanted to hurt you; in fact I don't want to see you freezing to death out here because you don't feel welcome in your home. I can see that—so don't try to deny it. And the fact is not only can't I blame you, but I think it's a good thing because you don't belong there with them. They obviously don't care about you if they're willing to treat you like that after all you've done for them, and—don't you see how this Wally who's supposed to be your friend is teasing you? How this Starfire girl is teasing you? They're going to hurt you, Robin—and she doesn't care, especially, if she does. They were speaking her language in front of you that you can't understand. They were telling a mean joke about you, do you know that?"

I opened my mouth to say something, but the hands tightened and I could not speak—the weight of his knowledge seemed to press my jaw back together in silence and be enacted by the hands. If I had been able to talk, I don't know what I would have said—and so he continued, because again that was what he needed:

"None of them care about you. I tried to make you see that—but this is good because you will finally be able to see it for yourself now. I wouldn't be surprised if the two of them are in bed together right now—she might not even be sick. They just wanted to get you out of the house so they could be together, and while that's good for me, you don't deserve to be treated that way. You may not realize it but I do care for you—and for a while, after you betrayed me after all I gave you as my apprentice, I thought that was foolish. But the more I thought about it I realized you're blinded by your love for this girl so strongly that you can't see clearly how horrible of a person she really is, and it's not your fault. But this is good, ultimately,—in the end you'll see that—because you will see it for yourself now."

"W-what are you…?" Was all I managed to croak out. My voice was hoarse and wary, and I felt the weight of his words pressing on my head like an uncaring blow as dizziness once again took me—a different kind of dizziness, but a dizziness, one I will say was somehow safer, because with it there was Slade, soundly. He held my face and made me lean against the pillar so that I could not fall over, and—I felt that strange support translate further, reach deeper, than just this physical world. I thought about that moment for a while afterwards.

"I still want you, Robin. I didn't give up on you. So here we are. You're cold and weak and alone and you don't know where to go. You're trying to convince yourself that you can go back to the tower and all this mess with her with dispel, but you know, and I know, there's nothing good for you there anymore. She doesn't love you, Robin; I won't deny you that she is your friend, but she doesn't love you. That's a pity, really—because you don't deserve to have your heart broken, no matter how you've fought and protested me. And I want to take you away from that, Robin—because you are still my apprentice and you're not going to die in the cold. I'd ask you to come with me right now, but I doubt if you'll believe me, so—if that's true, if you don't believe that I care for you, if you don't believe what I'm saying to you, if you're in denial still, my little one—then go back to the tower and see for yourself. I'm not afraid of you getting away. You'll come back, soon, you will, my little one, and you know where to find me. I've waited a long time—and if I have to I'll wait longer. I'm patient. Maybe it's best that you see for yourself so we don't have any questions."

I finally managed to pull out of his grip, and he didn't stop me. His hands fell away as I staggered from the safety of the pillar's support and out into the open, cool and damp unfinished office complex's vastness. I felt the urge to sway and give in to faint but managed to keep myself grounded, managed to glare at him because—again it was all I could do. I had actually very little begun to process what he had said, at least not to an extent of thoughtfulness, but I did what I had to. I glared and clenched my teeth and fists but we both knew that I had no real power and there was no denying that between us both. He knew I was powerless, knew I shared his thoughts, at least internally, in the darkest reaches of my mind, and knew that I would come back. And he knew that I knew it, too, and that was the mutual understanding between us. We were already bonded by that. He wasn't worried because he knew—he knew more than anything that this bond, this sudden, strange bond, almost compelled me to come back, and he knew that. He knew I was his and he knew that, even if I didn't acknowledge it and tried to fight and kick and scream, I knew it too. We shared this knowledge in our bond and it was something I couldn't deny—especially in that, somehow, immediately, I knew that forever we'd share it.

But I hissed an obscenity at him and staggered away, maybe having falsely convinced myself that I was going to get my rest so that I could come back and detain him or something like that, but again the knowledge that we shared was real enough to deter this even then. But in keeping with my hero's badge, my actions were thoughtless though calculated upon what guidelines and morals I had always followed in my years fighting crime, that, ultimately, had gone to foolishly define me sometimes into acting just as foolishly. If I was smart I would have tried to take him down then and there, if I was acting solely on those codes, but when emotions like I had crept into the mix there was room for error that, I guess, ultimately confined me to where I am today. The fact was I wanted to prove Slade wrong, wanted to go back to the tower and see Starfire and Wally in separate rooms, and Starfire greet me lovingly with a hug and then take care of me until I felt better—so that we'd share in our sickness, mutually. If I was smart I would have attacked him—but he had known what to do from the minute he first set his eyes on me as I contemplated jealousy of Starfire's attention to Wally. He wasn't a bluffer and I knew that. He had plans that were undeniable in their complex sureness. There wasn't a question because—well, he was in charge and he knew how to manipulate me, ultimately. It was all he needed; maybe, in my falsified anger, in my inability to admit the truth which he could witness so thoroughly, he believed that once I realized the truth, our bond would be made that much more undeniable and stronger. Because that was where I became his; when I fought him and the truth, when I made that truth _mean _something, I would become his.

And—he was right.

I was stupid.

"You're lying," I moaned, staggering away. "You're a freaking liar and you know nothing about me or Starfire. You know nothing—just because you want me doesn't mean you know me. You haven't watched me. You're a liar and I'll show you."

And with that I turned and limped away, feeling the stiffness in my legs but not allowing it to slow me. I wanted to put distance between us; the more distance, I thought, the less truth and relevance his words would have.

"You know where to find me," he repeated, softly.

I left that shaky safety of the complex and went into the raging storm.

* * *

I remembered the necklace; the small carousel that spun around hanging on its beautiful gold chain. It was a thing of splendor but it was disregarded by my friend, Starfire, because of its age, and wornness. She liked the glass star because it was new and defining of her; she never took it off even in her sickness. And when she and Wally were kissing, the necklace was still hanging around her neck; the little carousel, in the thrift store that was undoubtedly now closed, sat alone, dejected, in cold darkness. I watched them unnoticed for a while as they exchanged this which I would never have, was lost to me with this cruel storm as it washed away everything I had once thought I knew. Outside the rain had fallen into a monotone patter that expressed their love as they melded and became one, and I stood out from this in my exclusion, separated and breaking their passion-sky like a bolt of misplaced, random lightning. I listened as the sounds they made as they kissed became one with the sounds of the rain and I heard my breath as an alienated thing. I felt black and white in this tower where that same passion of the sky made beautiful, streaking colors of a rainbow and divided me out of this separate world like harsh prison bars cutting through the cruel night. I didn't belong with them; and the phrase repeated itself over and over in my mind, melded with their sounds, and it seemed that they said that, _you don't belong with us, Robin, you don't belong_, again and again, as their lips touched and sealed this fantastic connection they had, where their consecration of languages branched further and warmer into this place until its isolating depth elapsed me into a cold shallowness from which I could not escape. I looked into the west, into the rain, where the shaky complex set, and I stared there for a while.

It was a long time before I left the tower.

But my spirit had gone the minute they fell into one.


	2. The Bystander

The complex was deserted again the day I went back. The rain had frozen and turned to soft clumps of snow in only a matter of days since I left the tower, and so the work was halted completely, and the complex taped off. The worms were dead and it was dark inside, but I noticed, every night as I lingered around there, one single light that was left on and near it, the tape cut down for easy entrance. The light stayed on all night, and every day when the workers put up new tape it was cut down again, and so soon enough they gave up, probably figuring some poor homeless person needed shelter there, and no harm could come from that, and so every day the entrance would beckon to me. I lingered there; when no other place came to my mind to go I did not go inside the complex, but outside there seemed some safety, even in the cold, wind, and snow and rain that would beat upon me. But the light's burning was a beacon, a lighthouse—but separated by the waves of my emotions, morals, everything I had ever stood for, I would not cross to it.

Sometimes I saw him standing in the doorway, the entrance cut open for me, in the latest hours of the night, into the early morning, looking out. He would see me and I would see him, and for a long time we'd just stare at one another, through the rain and snow and wind until I slunk away to somewhere else—but I'd always return. As darkness fell when I came to that place to look inside the complex and into the warm light there was a sweater, a hat, a pair of snow gloves, and a thick black coat left for me, stacked and folded neatly, plain, no S, but I knew it was branding, telling. For the first night I did not wear it; the next day, when the rain froze to snow and my body shook with that cold, lonesomeness, I wore the sweater, which, even thick and insulating, didn't ward off the cold, but for the first night that was all I wore along with the new gloves. By the second, it was hailing, not violently, but with this freezing ice that made my blood completely chill. While we stared at one another, he watched me put on the coat over the sweater and then the hat over my ears. I pulled the hood over that and stared across at him for a while, but I still didn't feel well enough to cross. I slunk off, away from the heat that ultimately was there but feeling this new comfort given to me.

I had disconnected my locator, I think, probably immediately after leaving the tower, but then that time still remains quite a blur to me because my mind was somewhere else entirely, and in keeping with this I took no provisions; no food, clothing for anything like the weather offered, nothing to suggest I'd not ever again return to the tower, but I wouldn't, at least not for a long time. I didn't even take my motorcycle; I walked out of the tower and across the bridge and down to the antique store. I bought the carousel necklace with what little cash I was carrying in my pocket; I had left my credit card on my nightstand and of course had not thought to take it, so by the time I spent that dollar I only had about two dollars left. I probably would have been able to get food anywhere I went because everyone knew me and wanted to repay me for everything I did to save the city, but not once, in that whole span of five days away from the tower and not quite close to Slade, did I go into any restaurant to even try. It might have been a result of my pride—not wanting to show the city who had once bowed down to me what I had become, but honestly it was not that, because as egotistical as I know I can be, I realize that what kept me out was genuine uncaringness for my state of being; That was, if I lived or died, it seemed not to matter.

I bought the carousel necklace, and would sit in the park surviving demolition near the complex and would turn it around in my hands, playing with it as it seemed to be the only thing keeping me sane. I would watch kids from afar having snowball fights and laughing; young lovers skating on the city's only ice-rink, and my spirit could only sink. I tried to distance myself from it and sat in a quiet, unplowed area of the park, where the snow was knee deep. I could still hear laughter but did not see the sources, and lapsed into a cold, somehow comforting anonymity as I sat somewhat nestled in the snow, freezing, my legs cold and damp—but better than to hear that horrible music, and I didn't want to leave, and wouldn't until it got dark and it was honestly a little frightening, and dabbling too far in the loneliness that was taking violently my heart, because then I couldn't _hear _the music anymore. I went and found the light. I saw Slade leaning against a pillar inside the complex, looking out at the city lights. On the concrete railing near the subway, where I had taken to waiting and watching him, this time there was new boots and socks, a change of pants and underwear, and a pair of snow-pants. I didn't want to take it because he was watching, because he knew—knew how much I needed this, these things, this care, _him_—and he tilted his head slowly, regarding me with that one eye, unmistakably strained, before turning away and looking down at the ground. I took the pile of things and slunk away again, but it was very hard to leave that time.

By this point the nights in the snow were pretty comfortable, I suppose—not _comfortable_, _preferable_, or anything like that, but not hostile, either. With the new clothing, I was pretty bundled up, and warm enough that I managed to get a little sleep even lying in a little opening between the bridge and the railing, a small thing that became sort of a little cave for me, which was insulated enough even though snow had reached there but warmed by the bridge's light. I slept for a few hours and woke up feeling better than I had, groggy, and a little disoriented by the shock of coming out of sleep to the cold, but I was doing better. It was the first time I had slept in six days, I think—because even before I left the tower I hadn't really been sleeping, where circumstances weren't the same and there was no seriousness, emotions involved, just stupidly staying up all night for fun, but it had the same effects. And I think resting revived my brain to see crucial information that it had seemed to miss, or ignore, before this: I was starving. In terms of food, I had had only a very light breakfast the day Starfire came down with her cold, which had consisted of an apple and some yogurt. And that, then, had been over three days ago, without having consumed anything. My stomach growled helplessly; my mind moaned for nourishment and my judgment cared little for anything else but satisfying bodily needs. I found myself at the complex again, in the early afternoon, when it was snowing lightly. I probably expected him to leave a hot dinner for me—at least it was what I had hoped, but in truth I wasn't too far off.

When I got there, however, he wasn't there, and the concrete railing was empty. I slunk down on the bench beneath the railing and nodded off for an unknown period of time until I was woken by a presence as it sat itself next to me on the small bench.

"Unusual time. So has your choice been made, my little one?"

I looked over at him, sitting there next to me on the bench in that freezing weather. He looked probably as exhausted as I did, and he was making no attempt to hide it, and that in itself was obvious too. I had never seen him so passive, but then, so could be said for myself and actually in reality it so little mattered it wasn't even worth elaborating upon at that point, because I think similarly we were both somewhere that was unpleasant and tiring, and I think that that neutrality had made caring an unnecessary and otherwise only tiring feat (and to be honest if I even cared _why_ he was tired, I wouldn't have voiced it). He wore everything he usually did, the soldier swagger with the gleaming metal, and seemed unaffected by the cold, at least, at face value, but if he was beneath the suit he didn't show it. He had another black garment folded neatly in his lap.

I shook my head. I did not move, and did not speak—my face did not contort and I did not jump into fighting stance. I sat still next to him and just shook my head. During that afternoon, the streets were mostly empty; a squirrel or rat or something would scamper by detachedly, and the wind would make the wood buildings moan and the trees sway in their whisper, and would make the snow falling sing with its chill, but the place was devoid of people. It was not lost upon me, that there was no one, and I was so alone—but I shook my head.

It still seemed all I could do.

And he didn't seem to expect any deviating response from that. He unfolded the garment, which turned out to be a long black cape, and said, simply, almost immediately, "Well, then you will at least wear this, my little one." He stood up and circled the bench until he was behind were I sat, and he slipped the cape between my back and the concrete surface of the bench and pulled the clips around my neck and fixed them snugly, comfortably, but I didn't protest the action. Staring at the office building across from the complex, which was new and shining, I watched windows fill with steam and snowflakes and water drops dot the glass and did not look at him when he came back around and stood in front of me and fixed my cape in the front so that it was closed to keep the heat in. I imaged myself inside one of those buildings; I imagined having a small office sandwiched between some white-collars just like me as I worked to support my family at home, filing papers and typing on a computer all day and night, but I'd be content.

In the end, the bad guy didn't care about those white-collars. They'd blow up your office building but when they had a stupid young kid to go after instead, who gave a shit?

"You've gotten so thin."

I had barely noticed that one of his gloved hands was still lingering on my chest where he had secured the cape around me. Even through all the thick layers of clothing he had given me, he could still probably feel the ribs I knew jutted out. Because it wasn't as if I had been the biggest eater in the first place, especially not since Paris and getting back from fighting the Brotherhood of Evil, when somehow something so important became almost irrelevant. At most in a day, I might have a piece of fruit for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and sometimes nothing for dinner. If I had anything, it typically consisted of whatever was most readily available, and sometimes that meant a bag of chips or a candy bar. I hadn't been much of a health nut because weight had never taken to me, no matter how much I ate, and neither did it slow down my training—but then I never ate much, anyway. I had, a lot, often, even, before Terra and Slade's ménaging, but with increasing outward looking at the needs of others and not so much self-obsession with a certain enemy, I had stopped trying. I only ate when I could not function, and, a rare occurrence, it became frightening to feel the hollows in my stomach as I did.

"God," he said, softly, staring at my chest. "You were already so skinny as it was, Robin, and now look at you—you're as thin as a stick. When was the last time you ate?"

I still did not look at him when I spoke: "I don't know, Slade."

I saw out of the corner of my eye that he was still eyeing me warily, taking in the thin but unmistakable lines of jutting ribs and bone, the shrunken skin even beneath the layers I wore. The thickness of those things he'd given me could not conceal what he had correctly phrased, a paper, or stick like figure that looked as if it would collapse with a slight breeze. He ran his fingers over my chest and I could feel my ribs groan with this feeling; like being played like a xylophone, the ribs clacked and cried in harmonious rising tones. My stomach contorted in hunger, and it was probably then and there that I felt, for the first time, tears coming on; since leaving the tower, sleeping alone, avoiding that music—now I felt the urge to cry as I now looked down at his hand running against the length of my ribs. Maybe it was that I saw what I had become for the first time, in looking; maybe it was that I saw that he was part of it too, or maybe it was both, or neither. Maybe I was realizing my situation, truly and without lying, for the first time, and maybe I was just beginning to comprehend that. Maybe it was the first time that that I realized what had happened to me, remembered Starfire, and Wally, and took in that effect in its completeness. I saw what they had done to me; I saw his hands and saw what he wanted to do for me. A single tear drop slid out of my eye and beneath my mask, and splashed upon my knee. Another followed until I was weeping, and I watched them fall onto my snow-pants and gather in unchanging dew drops on my body, never ceasing.

He sat down, and suddenly I found him pulling me into his arms and holding me. To think back on that moment is odd, and I don't forget that moment easily. It's strange, of course, to think that an enemy like Slade could do something like that—let alone have, in his spirit, the capacity of kindness for that such action. It's also odd to think that, again, neither of us seemed to care what was being done anymore. He didn't care about holding me—and if he thought that showing me this kindness was an act of weakness he'd never looked stronger when he did it, and in turn I didn't care, either—didn't squirm or writhe to get out of that grip. It seemed for a moment that neither of us knew each other; that we were two citizens in the city just living and coexisting, like I had been in a car crash and a bystander, Slade, had been there to hold me until the ambulance came, keep me from going into shock and dying. To be honest it didn't feel like this was the same guy who had tried to kill me; this was not the person who had planted probes in my friends or caused me to dabble in evil like I did. He was a virgin to me, unchanging and anonymous, a passing but lasting presence that was not ignored; he wouldn't stay long after the car crash but when I woke up in the hospital I'd remember that person always, wouldn't know his name but thank him unendingly. This was Slade now. We both seemed to believe or pretend this, coming into this strange new light and out of the darkness of our past. In the light falling snow we were reborn; we were new but we did not forget our past lives, clung to them without effect. Slade held me and I laid in his arms, unmoving, but I still thought, tiredly, trying, _I can't. _Passing but lasting, Starfire's presence in my life too did not dispel so easily. A purgatory like place, I laid there in Slade's arms as he ran his fingers through my hair but thought about Starfire. It was not about Slade—wouldn't be anymore. It was about her. He was not the problem, but I thought—_I can't._

He held me close, and I laid there, listening to the city winter birds in the far off park chirping quietly and benignly. He was warm, and it almost didn't feel like it was snowing around us as it was, increased now by falling darkness of late afternoon; the metal of his suit, his strong arms, served to insulate me thoroughly, and it was not lost upon me that I was the warmest I had been in the time since leaving the tower—untouched by the cold and freezing rain and elements around us. I laid my head on his chest and listened to his heart beat beneath the metal, clearly heard, a steady and comforting beat that lulled my tears back into my eyes and quieted my shaking until I was still and calm. I felt his fingers running gently through my hair and was soothed by that; the hands that had once dealt painful and undying blows to my skin now caressed the tresses like they had the fragility of a newborn bird. He shushed me until my tears had stopped and then he did not speak, but he didn't need to. I laid in his arms and listened to the heart beat, the gentle thumping that drew me calm, and felt alive with this other who was similarly alive. I felt grounded for the first time since leaving the tower, felt purposeful, and the need to leave fled as fast as I would have had he not been there to hold me and dry my tears. I realized why I came and stared at him every night; the human side to him, which I had almost known when he'd made me his apprentice, was there and real and beckoning. I wanted to go to him, and wanted to hear his heartbeat and know that there was still something warm in the world. I wanted to know there was something real and manifested, something new I could be a part of. I wanted human companionship and wanted comfort my friends had not given me, a fatherly touch, where I didn't have to guess, and things were taken care of—and had he not found me on the bench I might have killed myself, if from fatigue and altered judgment most simply as it would be best to believe, as soon as that night. My enemy had saved my life again. I thanked him for that.

I nodded off briefly while laying in his arms after I stopped weeping. I was soothed and warm and even suffice to say comfortable—and again, without consideration to the specific circumstances, it seemed not to matter what either of us did in this time and place and I gave little thought even after I woke up from my brief nap in hunger pains. At the most basic of levels it would neither have mattered to me if he had been the one to kill me in my sleep—if he who had grounded me didn't want to keep me that way, then better off that I die at least _thinking_ I was warm. I was not worried for my safety and did not think to keep myself awake, to move or squirm or protest, though I little knew when I fell asleep anyway. It seemed either way not to matter—because either way I had a primordial understanding that I would be fine, that, if he was the one to enact whatever, I would be okay. He became like God to me instantly—and I like a blind follower, who believed that whatever his plans were were solid and true and with undying beauty in the end. But I was not so blind because in retrospect if I were to pick anyone to be this so called god then Slade was undoubtedly the most fitting; he who knew me, who was stern but caring, ultimately as I saw him laying in his arms, who wanted a son as I needed a father. And I was okay, as I had always believed I would be: even reaching to the earliest battles with Slade, my life never seemed to loom or deter over the line of death and living. It's strange to say but in a lot of ways I think I trusted him more than I could ever understand, and he knew that, too. How reassuring, I have to say it is, to fall asleep with someone like that—to be there and to be weak and sad and to wake up the same way you were, but better, protected by this so called enemy. I was a fool to think I could avoid him—and I was a fool to still try, even then.

When I woke it was night, and there was a streetlight on over us that did not have the same effect as the light now shining reassuringly in the complex, where I wanted and should have been, where I protested but longed, but Slade had not moved me. It was still snowing though it was considerably falling lighter, more harmlessly, in soft, fluffy clumps. Snow fell on the metal of his suit but I was still dry and very warm, actually, very comfortable nestled against him. I was woozy and my head felt heavy, and even after waking initially I laid there for a while against him, half asleep, listening to the sounds of the city echoing far away from our little dwelling, our own created world. He stroked my hair silently and I nodded in and out for a little while until I was unable to deny my stomach any longer and moaned in wakefulness, hungrier than ever, feeling an basic emptiness, one that was painful but dulled (which was arguably worse than a merely painful sensation as now it suggested that I was perhaps dying of hunger) and I felt the need to vomit even though there was nothing in my stomach for that function. I groaned again, and looked up at him, tiredly, struggling to keep my eyes open, but somehow suddenly feeling that if I didn't I wouldn't wake up again—and wherever this new liveliness, the desire to remain, came from, I do not know. I looked up at him quietly and said nothing. His own eye found mine and looked down upon me as he continued to stroke my hair. He was noticeably tired but I could see, instantly, that he would not fall asleep as I had—a protector mentality that was not lost on me. His eye squinted a little bit, indicating his sensing of what I felt. He shifted me closer, drawing me in tightly so that even if I had had the strength to move I probably couldn't have.

"Have you made your choice yet, little one?"

I stared up at him, and it took me a minute to formulate the two words I said, that bound me, that pained me, what made it impossible to escape from my previous relations to Starfire. But even in that dreary night in his arms, warm and comfortable, protected and cared for, it seemed all I could do for anything I had once been. "I can't," I said softly, and blinked at him slowly, receiving for what was perhaps the first time a sigh rising from the mask, and watching the eye close in what seemed to be brief defeat. I felt his arms tighten around me, and I found myself maybe unconsciously curling closer to him for warmth, but I repeated, the words seeming detached, not my own—_I can't. I can't._

It was a minute before he spoke again. "Alright, Robin." He sounded tired and wary, of a different type but arguably as tired as I. He was tired but he didn't stop stroking my hair, and he didn't loosen his arms. That, either, was not lost to me. "Alright. I will let you go back out there tonight, because you will come back of your own free will, but I am not going to let you leave now without eating. You will die if you do, do you understand me?"

I nodded, silently.

"Will you let me get you dinner?"

I nodded again, slowly.

He closed his eye, this time, as if in praying thankfulness. He sighed, in that same fashion. "Alright. My god, that's my good boy. You're worrying the hell out of me." And then fluidly he stood, without faltering even slightly, and hoisted me in his arms and laid me over his shoulder. I groaned a little, but didn't protest. I felt secure in his arms and knew he wouldn't drop me; didn't care where he took me, because I knew it wouldn't be bad either way—knew he knew what was best for me and how to take care of me. I lay my head against the crook of his neck and closed my eyes, listening to the sounds of the night contrasted comfortingly with the heartbeat I could sense in his spirit, maybe hallucinated, and his breathing, which was calm and soft. He walked easily and the slight bounce in his walking seemed to lull me quietly into a calm that is indescribable, implacable, to someone like Slade, unimagined—and therefore all the more comforting.

"My god, you're light," he said softly, and ran his hand down my back soothingly, bouncing me lightly as he walked. "We'll have to fix that, won't we? I'm going to get you a nice big steak and we'll see if we can fatten you up a little bit, hm?"

With my eyes closed, I felt myself blush ever so slightly—a little indication of a returning self, my spirit, and something brighter on the horizon. I mumbled an "okay" and nodded off again, as he carried me to wherever to do what he had promised.

He took me to what I realized very quickly was an underground villain hangout—where the bad guys came to ménage and eat and have drinks and speak of their evil plans. We had gone down what reminded me of a secret tunnel to get to this so called "speakeasy" and though I was barely awake I remember it pretty well. It was a sleek metal tunnel that ran beneath the city, reminding me a lot of hideouts in Gotham that were on police radar, always watched, for whatever activity might be inside. A man in a nice black suit opened the door and welcomed Slade in, though he cautioned him to keep on eye on his "guest," which would be me, because the majority of the people who hung out there hated my guts and would have done anything to put an end to me, and everyone knew it too. Slade had the butler take us in through the back way because he did not want any trouble, and into a private room that probably belonged to him. He sent this butler back to get me the meal he had scribbled down on one of those informal restaurant cards, and some cocktails for himself, powerful little shots that were popular in these types of bars, and told him to do it quickly or he'd have the butler killed. He also told the butler that if anything made its way into my food, for any reason, he would not only have him killed but his family and friends as well. In all seriousness, the guy looked like he was about to piss himself and quickly agreed to the terms and conditions: he had everything at the table within five minutes, reportedly giving away a steak for another patron so that I could have it. On the plate also, there was those breakfast potatoes that I really liked with steak, and a chocolate milkshake on the side. When I'd been more unhealthy, before the Brotherhood of evil, I would often eat meals like this any chance I got, because steak and potatoes was my favorite, keeping my metabolism up for when I trained rigorously. Chocolate milkshakes were also my favorite, and I liked them for that same reason.

"How did you know," I asked, but it came out as more of an uninterested statement as I watched him cutting the steak with a carving type knife and fork. The steak itself was medium rare, just how I liked it. I watched him cut it into very manageable squares with a certain practiced care that was almost a phenomenon, seemingly, to witness.

"Well—you remember Terra, of course. Those cameras she put up…"

"Oh."

"Yes," he said, and pushed the plate in my direction. "Now eat that slowly. You're not leaving until you eat all of it but there's no need to rush. Just relax."

"Okay," I said softly, though eating the steak, even cut into small pieces like he had for me, seemed like a real arduous task. I picked up the fork and jabbed one of the pieces of steak, and brought it to my mouth. It was soft and almost melted in my mouth. Really good. Had I cared more about the present time, had I not been thinking about Starfire and Wally and everything else, I might have been really impressed. The milkshake was also very good and also made me feel very good, and the whole meal—well it was so pleasing and so satisfying, and I was so hungry that I barely noticed him watching me with that one speculative eye. I was probably eating like an animal and felt myself getting crumbs and butter and stains and the like on myself, dirtying my face, but if it bothered him he didn't show it. He seemed very pleased and his shot glasses went untouched, disregarded, as he watched me—and had I looked really into that one eye I would have noticed the adoring, fatherly quality had come back, and even as he scolded me to slow down I could see his eye shining and could hear him purring just very slightly.

"Slow down, my little one," he told me as I shoved more of it in my mouth, ravaging the plate like a madman. "I know you're hungry but you'll get sick if you eat that too fast." And when I wouldn't slow down to the way he liked, because I had really gotten going by tasting the food and it was too hard to resist, he gently tugged the plate away and pushed the milkshake in my direction, as more of a chaser than anything, so that I would take a break from this food and not get sick.

I didn't protest—it was what he wanted—and I sipped the milkshake even though I wanted more steak pretty badly. I looked up at him and noticed that now, without me eating like I had, his gaze had somehow slipped sadly back into that tired, deplored presence, not so avidly but wary in the idea of where I was and what I would do and how what I wanted to do then, how I protested, would not include being with him. He threw one of the shots back with intense skill between the slots of his mask and seemed not to miss a drop, slamming the glass down on the table as bar-hoppers triumphantly do, but his eye was sad and drooped—the sad drunk, as it seemed, but he didn't get drunk. _Slade_ did not _get_ drunk.

"Won't you please come home with me, my little one? You've just been worrying me to death, understand? I can't sleep."

I took my mouth off of the straw and stared at him, my eyes tired and wary and matching his. I didn't know what to say. "…You can't sleep?"

"No, I can't, if you want to know the truth," he said, and threw another shot back. "I told you I haven't given up on you and every night you're out there…—why are you protesting this? You know you'll come back to me, don't you, Robin? You're a smart boy—you _know _you'll come back to me, don't you?"

The word slipped out before I could stop it, but it was true. "Yes."

"So then why are you doing this?" I could hear the conviction in his voice and it was apparent to me immediately how undying above everything else it was—telling me immediately and without hesitation that no matter what he would not give up on me, as it seemed now. He didn't even sound like Slade anymore—Slade, with Terra, wouldn't say he couldn't sleep. Slade, with Terra, wouldn't _sleep_. Slade wouldn't have cared, but then, he would, and so would I, and so now we were again taking our past selves and looking into them and taking what we wanted from them to keep but we weren't caring what new development we made, what we showed, how we threw it forth. He didn't sound like Slade—Slade, who had never seemed to care about anything but himself, seemed torn apart by my absence, worried to death like a father for a sickly son. Slade didn't get drunk, but he did not _drink_. I watched him now and saw the bystander with the kind and concerned spiritual mentality and felt that he sensed the same in me, and for the first time I realized how he felt and—I did not want to see him like this, do this to him. This was not who I was, but it was, at the same time. Passing and lingering, all at once.

"I'm sorry, Slade," I said softly, and looked down into the frosty milkshake glass on the table before me. I didn't touch it, feeling ashamed, unworthy.

"Why?" he said. He sat down the shot that he had been pulling to his mask to throw back, and the eye fixed upon me, drooped in sadness of what I realized was my fatigue.

"I can't come with you—n-not now, okay? I just—you were right, okay?" I was crying again; tears started quickly and fell in rapids. "You were right, okay, but I can't—s-she was everything to me and s-she—I d-don't…"

He stood up and came over to me, and sat down in the chair next to mine. He took the napkin up from the table and dried my eyes gently, with what I can only describe as with an almost loving touch, until I was quiet again and I had stopped. I didn't resist as he cleaned my face and could just barely turn him down when he asked me, softly,

"Will you take your mask off, please?"

I closed my eyes and shook my head. "I c-can't—not n-now, okay?" And I continued to cry, and he continued to clean my eyes with that care and lovingness and did not ask me to remove it again that night. He heard me saw "not now" and felt better, and I saw it, knew it, felt it. It seemed the little I could give him and owed him, and detached from the old Robin, seeming not to belong to me—but being mine anyway, and my conviction. The truth was, I'll tell you now—I cared. That's just it.

When I had stopped crying I opened my eyes and looked at him. He was looking back at me and the expression of fatigue was unchanging. I heard him sigh within the mask, and for a while he said nothing—just sitting there, looking at me, thinking, observing, speculative, tired.

"I h-have to talk to her," I said softly, and his eyes dimmed and he sighed. He got up and walked back over to his side of the table, and briefly regarded the shots before passively swiping them off the table with a gentle but uncaring hand. I watched the sturdy shot glasses, build to withstand those triumphant bar-hoppers or Slade, roll unharmed across the floor and stop at the edge of the pool of their contents beneath them. He watched them too, his eye following their paths in the same objective manner, and said, as he did,

"I don't want you to—she'll lie to you—but if you think that's best then you should. But—goddammit, will you please come back to me, Robin? Please?"

I looked up from the floor where I watched the shot glass. "Yes," I said softly, and meant it.

I finished the meal and stood up, feeling tired but a lot better since I had eaten. He walked me out out the back way and when we reached the street I turned to walk to Titans tower, but he pulled me back and made sure my coats were zipped up and my cape secured. I started off again, slowly, and he hesitated, but then called me back again, a second time.

"Come here, Robin," he said, and I turned and made my way to him without hesitating in though, care for what might happen.

I came to him and he put his arms around me, and hugged me. I could hear his voice falter in his wary, tired pain, breaking on the verge of truthful tears, though he didn't cry, because Slade _didn't cry_, as he said, holding me tightly and protectively, and as I felt not wanting to let me go, ever, "I can help you, Robin—please stay. Please."

"I'll come back," I said. My arms somehow found their way around his body. I embraced him. I don't know why or how I did it, but I did, and it was what he needed to let go, finally, and release me back into the world after what seemed like a century of lingering in his arms again and thinking about Starfire.

"Keep that coat zipped," he said tiredly.

"I will."

"That's my boy," he said, and watched me walk off back into the cold night—

But this time warmer.


End file.
